Israeli academic Shlomo Sand discusses his book, The Invention of the Jewish People, which was a bestseller in Israel. I have not read it yet, but it’s on my reading list. Before getting to it, I watched this two-part interview by Riz Khan on Al-Jazeera, International.
Sand says his work undermines some major tenets of Zionism, namely about Israelis descending from the ancient Israelites and the Jewish diaspora being the product of forced exile from Rome.
The implication is that the Palestinians are actually more directly descended from the ancient Hebrews. Sand shows that early Zionists, like Ben-Gurion, believed this, as well.
He argues Israel’s founding myths and construction of a Jewish state have led to an Israel that is not democratic. This does not, he argues, make Israel a fake state.
Every state has founding myths to justify its formation, especially the more criminal sides of power-shaping. In a sense every people are invented, or imagined as Benedict Anderson suggested. He does not think it useful to challenge Israel’s existence. Rather, he seems to suggest, it is about moving Israel to a non-Zionist future. It necessitates ending Israel’s ethnocratic function — to serve as the state for one people over others it rules.
He thinks it is too early to talk about a one-state solution. Israel should be for all its citizen, no matter their religion, but the occupied territories should be the basis for a second state for now. At the same time, he does not think Israelis today are interested in “peace.” But, the future will require Israel to change deeply. Israelis will have to live with the Palestinians and the Middle East in some other arrangement not defined by Zionist objectives.
Related posts:
- Book refuting Jewish taboo on Israel’s bestseller list
- Israel: A Jewish State for both Jewish and Non-Jewish Immigrants!!!
- On Israel, the “Jewish State” and Annacrapolis…
- British MP: Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism
- Zionuts and American Jewish Opinion
"Shlomo"? lmao! Is that for real? Wait a minute… SAND? wtf?
If the book undermines some major tenets of Zionism, then all the bitter Will types should just love it.
No, it is not useful to challenge Israel’s existence… yes, the occupied territories should be the basis for a second state… yes, the future will require Israel to change deeply, and it will require the Palestinians to change deeply, probably more…. and yes, Israelis will have to live with the Palestinians in the Middle East. Now, only to package these obvious facts up into some sort of "get over on the man" or "fight the power" way that appeals to the Will crowd.
Posted by eagle007blogger | December 1, 2009, 2:45 pmby the way, it's Zand in Hebrew.
Posted by Commenter | December 1, 2009, 8:47 pmI think it's pointless to debate whether the Jews are "a people" or the Palestinians are "a people" or whether one was in the land before the other. The fact is that *today* there are two nations that have their ethnic identities closely tied to those lands for histrical, religious, cultural and political reasons. *All* nations are invented because a nation is a group of people that *perceives* that they have something in common and *self-identifies* as part of a group. It's a subjective notion. But just because it is based on subjective perception it doesn't mean it's not important. The only way Jews and Arabs will find peace is when they re-humanize this conflict and understand that the land is equally important to both nations and that every time a Jewish life is lost, a Palestinian life is lost too.
Posted by Angie | December 1, 2009, 8:09 pmI've read the book in Hebrew and agree that it's very interesting. While many of the studies Sand used to propel his thesis are not new, presenting them in a new light was very illuminating. However, some pieces of evidence and studies Sand cites have been refuted or have need not been accepted by the research community, or are skewed. For example, Sand claims that "the Ashkenazi Jews are more genetically similar to the Welsh than to the Arabs." The original research, available at the link below, says that "Two Ashkenazi Jews in our sample were found to share the most common haplotype of the Welsh, a frequent and widespread haplotype in northern Europe." So, a sample of two people. Not very significant. But then Sand doesn't mention other findings in this study, probably because they don't support his thesis, that other chromosomes, like EU9, EU10, Hg26 are most commonly found among… Palestinian Arabs and Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews. Oops, maybe after all we (Jews and Arabs) *are* cousins. Not too bore you with too many details, this is just one example for some methodological problems Sand's study has, and so take what you read there with a grain of salt. That said, it's a fascinating book. I just hope the superficial, automatic and brainless troopers that incite hate and maintain the conflict don't use it to claim that "here, this is why you Jews should get the hell out of here, because it's not your land and has never been." (Or, on the Israeli side, the perennial "this is an anti-Semitic book" or something bogus like this.) Because this is not going to help us solve this conflict.
A link to the genetic study: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/tcga/tcgapdf/Nebel-HG-00-IPA…
Posted by SaltyMac | December 2, 2009, 2:30 amis an exellent book
Posted by catauro | December 2, 2009, 3:36 am